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Branch Out World Paddington Bear REVIEW

If you like unit studies in your homeschool, and especially if your child likes Paddington Bear as much as mine does, then you just may love Branch Out World!

Branch Out World offers a lovely Paddington Bear unit study that, for us, brought about a different approach to Paddington Bear than we'd experienced before now.

This unit study offers over 45 pages of printable activities that cover:

- Migration

-Grammar Skills

-Design and Architecture

-Geography

-Literature

-Creative and Critical Thinking

There are timelines, minibooks, maps, flags, and notebooking pages.

Our Experience

Mr. B has loved Paddington Bear for as long as I can remember. When he was just a tiny little baby, I found the cutest stuffed Paddington at a thrift shop. He has always loved that little bear. Of course the book has been a permanent addition in our home, THEN the movie came out. Mercy sakes I don't think I've ever watched the same movie so many times in one day! THEN came Paddington 2! Sigh...his love for Paddington knows no end.

Seriously, is there anything sweeter than this silly, mischievous bear from "deepest, darkest Peru?" Branch Out World's unit study is a great way to explore the Paddington Bear book, and foster the love of this classic bear's tale (bear's tail HAHA!)

The first thing I did was print the whole thing. We received a digital file, and it was just over 3MB. At 69 pages, this PDF isn't too terribly long, but there's enough oomph there to make a good unit study.

The beginning pages are your typical "how to get started" type pages. They give you a basic overview and guidance, and also let you know what supplies you are going to need. I don't really like to run out and buy supplies just for one thing, so I always try to see what we have here on hand. The supply list is pretty much what any homeschool, or school age family will have on hand anyway-with the exception of ingredients for some recipes like Caster Sugar, which we ended up attempting to use Powdered Sugar instead.

For this unit study, I'm not sure if any other editions of the picture book exist, but the artist is Robert W. Alley. I like how the study gives details that aren't in the book, such as life details about Mr. Alley. Given that I'm not sure if other editions are out there, that could explain why the study says "...turn to the page that begins 'Fortunately, before anyone had time to answer'. Use the illustration immediately opposite which shows the Judy and Paddington arriving at 31, Window Gardens." instead of giving a page number.

I like the variety of activities. For the above mentioned activity, your child is tasked to look at the picture for a set period of time, a minute or two, then you close the book and the child must describe the picture from memory. This is a fun way to build memory skills. There's also a suggestion to make this into a game where you child has a set time to list as many details as they can on a sheet of paper. For older kids, that's a great activity to work on penmanship, memory, etc. You could even have younger kids, or non-verbal kids, try to draw from memory.

Similar activities are on the same days, such as Day 3-Exploring the Pictures. I prefer a bit of variety and mix up, so we didn't exactly follow the plan in that way. For example, we did the memory game on one day, then another day we studied the Architectural Features activity on the same page/day in the study. For us, the architecture part was too time consuming to be done on the same day as the game. He enjoyed both, equally, so we wanted to devote the same length of time to each.

My favorite part is the printables section in the back. There are mini books, maps, etc. that you cna print out to really fluff out this unit study. There's even lap book features to create. This is designed for five days, but to be honest we spent a lot more time on it than that. We never really spent longer than about a half-hour on any given activity-except for baking which took an hour or longer, but that's to be expected. But we split the days up. For example, Day One's activities may have spanned three or four days. We took our time and really got into the geography of the setting. There are included maps, so Mr. B colored those, and we labeled them, too. Then he did a lot of internet research into each area to study the political geography, as well as the climate of each area. I had him compare/contrast Peru to England, too.

Disclaimer: Our oven died. So we've been using a counter top convection "toaster" oven. This may work for others, but we were not able to get the recipes to really turn out in the toaster oven. Thus, no photos of that because well...pride. HA! If you have success with a toaster oven plan, comment and let me know!

Overall

Overall, this is a well developed unit-study that is centered on a beloved picture book. It covers math, reading, science, social studies, and language arts. It can be done in only five days, or you could do as we did and spend more time. The activities are fun, and it's super convenient to have the printables at the end. We highly recommend it.

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